Winter Study

Halfway across the lintel, a cry stopped her. Not a breath of wind, not a decibel of sound pollution, the voice cut into her eardrums with the force of a slap in the face.

“Is somebody there? Is somebody there? Help me! If somebody’s there, help me!”

Bob.

It was fucking Bob.

23

Bob had left the door open and caused A

Switching off the flashlight, she stepped quietly into the Visitors Center. Stale air, marinated in winter, harbored a chill that the outdoors, fierce with life even at forty below, could not attain. Inside cold, like inside dark, was harsher and scarier than anything under the moon.

Instinct – or antipathy – dictated she keep her whereabouts in question. Without moving, without making a sound, she waited for Bob to call again. Thick and slow and glacial, silence flowed around her till she felt if she didn’t move she would suffer the fate of the mastodons, encased in living ice for mille

The main room of the Visitors Center was at least thirty by forty feet. Tall picture windows gave onto a view of Washington Harbor. To the west side of the windows was a skeleton of a mature moose, reassembled and displayed in a glass box. Beside it, trapped in an eternal howl to a mate long dead, was a wolf preserved by the art of taxidermy.

A

“Is anybody there?” Bob’s voice emanated from the offices on the opposite side of the building. He didn’t sound particularly panicked for a man who had been hollering for help moments before. A

A minute passed, two: he didn’t call again and didn’t come out. She started across the hardwood floor. Ski-pant legs whistled together, big boots creaked and snuffled.

“Who’s there?” Bob called.

Yeti didn’t sneak, she thought sourly as a beam of yellow light raked down the hall and shot by her.

A

The instant he moved his light from her face, she aimed her flashlight at his. His eyes were bright, virtually twinkling, and his skin had a rosy glow. His balaclava was crunched down around his neck, but the hood of his parka was up as if he’d dressed for the cold in a hurry. With those jowls, it couldn’t have been comfortable.

“You look fine to me,” A

“It’s not me; it’s Robin,” Bob said.

Sick fear washed through A

“What happened?” she meant to ask, but it was a demand.

“Robin’s been pretty upset since Katherine’s accident,” Bob replied, his voice warm with concern.

“And?”

At the end of the hallway, he turned right. A

Blocking the entrance with his bulk, big on a bad day, bigger still with the down coat, he said: “Not everybody can handle violence with your aplomb, A

“Robin,” she called. A retching sound trickled on a moan from the dark room.

“Step away from the door,” A

“She’s been drinking pretty heavily,” Bob said. “I think she started sneaking it not too long after you left for your ski outing.”

“Move away from the door.”

“Aren’t we the officious little woman,” he said, but he moved.

The office reeked of wine. Robin was on the floor, her long legs curled up, knees under her chin. She was hatless and her hair fa

Half her attention on the young woman, half on Bob’s hulking shadow, glimpsed in stripes and washes as the beams of their lights moved, A

“I went out for a walk,” Bob said. “When I came by the V.C., I heard noises and came up to see what was going on. I found her back here with a box of the wine she’d taken from the bathroom fridge.” He played his light to the box of merlot on the floor a few feet from Robin. A mason jar was tipped over next to it, a stain spreading on the carpet. “I was trying to get her up and take her back to the bunkhouse, so she wouldn’t freeze to death, when I heard you come in.”

A

“Yeah, well, here’s your chance.”

Between the two of them, they got Robin to her feet and out of the Visitors Center. The trail from the bunkhouse to the V.C. and dock was swampy in summer. A wooden walkway, two planks wide, had been built to keep foot traffic from tearing up the muddy ground. Snow hid the planks, rendering the path tricky in much the same way the downed trees made traversing the cedar swamps tricky.

“Better let me carry her,” Bob said. “You walk ahead with the light.”

A

“Thanks,” she said, wondering what it was about Bob – or about having one’s life saved – that was so irritating. “Watch your footing.”

Bob picked Robin up easily. The biotech was tall, but slender as a blade of grass. “Go on ahead. I can light your way better from behind,” A

As she followed in his tracks, the size of the man, the unconscious woman in his arms, the flickering of the two flashlights, brought to mind a dozen derivatives of King Kong and Frankenstein; the beast, lumbering from the torchlight, the damsel clutched to his chest.

A

Jonah stood as well. “Ridley,” he called without taking his eyes off them. “Get in here.”

Bob didn’t put Robin down on the couch or move toward her room but stopped a moment to savor the spotlight. “Drunk as a frat boy on Friday night,” he said.